Business leaders keen to build on the nascent but growing sense of optimism in the north-east gathered this morning to hear about the flow of corporate deals fuelling rising expectations.

Business Insider editor Ken Symon welcomed more than 200 people to the Mercure Ardoe House Hotel armed with the latest round-up of deal activity from the fourth quarter in Scotland.

He noted that the final three months of 2016 saw “a flurry of deals” and some big-ticket transactions, including the first flotation in more than four years with the AIM debut of FreeAgent, and the £1.4bn sale of travel search firm Skyscanner to Chinese travel giant Ctrip.

“So there are quite a few deals around, and looking to 2016 as a whole,our figures show that there were 90 deals in the offshore space compared to 72 the year before,” he said.

“Despite the significant uncertainties before and immediately after the Brexit decision, the overall Scottish deals figures for 2016 were impressive.

“The number of Scottish deals in 2016 rose by more than 20 per cent, from 640 to 772, and the total number of deals involving Scottish advisors rose by more than 19 per cent to 1002.”

Host Nadine Dereza introduced a full line-up of panellists led by keynote speaker Mike Sibson, investment director at Business Growth Fund.

The crowd also heard from Norman Wisely, head of the Aberdeen office of title sponsor CMS.

Wisely said the legal firm had noted a slight recovery in the broader market during 2016 after what had been “a fairly miserable couple of years”.

Much of this was driven by insolvencies, restructuring and “significant dispute – good for lawyers, good for accountants, not good for anyone else”.

But as a result of this pain, the oil industry is now much more efficient than previously, with increasing collaboration and “pragmatic” amounts of investment are feeding through into rising transaction activity.

“What does all that mean for Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire?

“Well we hope to see some sort of rebound in oilfield services, maybe this year, maybe next year – the panel are much better qualified than I to comment,” Wisely said.

The £2.5bn Government-backed Business Growth Fund (BGF) has eight oilfield services investments in the north-east.

Noting the general desire to get past the “doom and gloom” and look to the positives, Sibson talked through the difficulties and dangers posed by lower oil prices, the possibility of a second Independence Referendum and Brexit before turning to the signs that the “conveyor belt” of deal activity might once again be moving in the right direction.

“So has the trading environment improved?

“I would say it has,” Sibson told the audience.

“This is a graph from one of our portfolio companies...(which shows that) it has stopped getting worse, and I think if you squint a bit, and look at it from an angle, it has actually started to get better.

“There was a lot of false tendering last year which involved re-tendering work but with no outcome.

“The cynic would say it was procurement departments keeping busy – this year there is a lot more real work, and tendering exercises actually have an outcome.”